Bitcoin made cyber extortion easy, Siacoin will make it impossible

After years of stealing data for fraud and corporate espionage, hackers increasingly are trying a new way to profit from their digital break-ins: extortion.

Hacks involving HBO and Netflix Inc. in recent months have shed light on the extortion threat, which law-enforcement officials and companies that investigate these digital break-ins say has been on the rise in recent years. Instead of simply stealing passwords or credit-card data, or locking access to victims’ systems as with ransomware, extortionist hackers try to...